all failures that crash the system with a machine check or check stop, even if intermittent, are reported as a diagnostic callout for service repair. to prevent the recurrence of intermittent problems and improve the availability of the system until a scheduled maintenance window, processors and memory dimms with a failure history are marked 2bad2 to prevent their being configured on subsequent boots. this function is called repeat gard.

    a processor or memory dimm is marked 2bad2 under the following circumstances:

    1 a processor or memory dimm fails built-in self-test (bist) or power-on self-test (post) testing during boot (as determined by the service processor).

    2 a processor or memory dimm causes a machine check or check stop during runtime, and the failure can be isolated specifically to that processor or memory dimm (as determined by the processor runtime diagnostics in the service processor).

    3 a processor or memory dimm reaches a threshold of recovered failures that results in a predictive callout (as determined by the processor run-time diagnostics in the service processor).

    during boot time, the service processor does not configure processors or memory dimms that are marked “bad.”

    if a processor or memory dimm is deconfigured, the processor or memory dimm remains offline for subsequent reboots until it is replaced or memory repeat gard is disabled. the repeat gard function also provides the user with the option of manually deconfiguring a processor or memory dimm, or re-enabling a previously deconfigured processor or memory dimm.

    for information about configuring or deconfiguring a processor, see the processor configuration/deconfiguration menu on page 40. for information on configuring or deconfiguring a memory dimm, see the memory configuration/deconfiguration menu on page 41. both of these menus are submenus under the system information menu. you can enable or disable cpu repeat gard or memory repeat gard using the processor configuration/deconfiguration menu.